HOUSTON — The VERIFY team is working hard to make sure you have the facts about the February winter weather event.
Governor Greg Abbott made several claims during a news conference on Thursday morning. One of them was that current power outages were not related to the power grid.
The VERIFY team looked into that claim.
“There are about 70,000 customers in Texas, without power. So how can it be? There are people in Texas without power, yet we are fully functioning and have ample power supply. The reason is because of issues with the local power providers. The most probable cause of a power outage right now around the state of Texas without power is either because heavy winds affected lines, or more likely because of an icing condition,” Abbott said.
Governor Abbott was quick to say Thursday morning’s outages were not due to issues with the Texas electric grid. The VERIFY team wanted to know whether that was true.
We have three sources for this. Oncor Electric, CenterPoint Energy, and Entergy Texas, three of the largest power providers in the state.
All three said that outages were not grid-related.
Oncor is the largest transmission and distribution electric utility in the state with more than 10 million customers.
Kerri Dunn with Oncor told the VERIFY team, “The outages we have at this time are from ice impacts from the winter weather, mainly from build-up on tree limbs and power lines, which can add about 30 pounds, and also from icy roadway conditions where vehicles have hit power poles.”
So, we can verify the governor’s claim that the 70,000 power outages across the state just before noon on Thursday were not due to impacts on the grid.
In his news conference, the Governor also said Texas has more generators online this year because they passed a required weatherization inspection.
“About 99% of those power generators past inspection,” Abbott said.
Our source for this is ERCOT.
According to its final report on Winter Weather Readiness Inspections, of the 324 facilities that were inspected, 16 had deficiencies. As of January 17, 2022, all but three had addressed those problems.
So, we can verify, the governor’s claim that 99% of power generators past inspection, is true.